Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Oh, Aqua Will LOVE This One; The iTunes Pass
Topic Started: Apr 7 2009, 03:54 AM (92 Views)
QuirtEvans
Member Avatar
I Owe It All To John D'Oh
Quote:
 
Record companies, weary of scraping by on 99-cent song downloads and dwindling CD sales, are trying to dress up and reimagine their most profitable product -- the album -- to woo music fans on Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store.

On Tuesday, Sony Corp.'s Epic Records plans to release a $17 iTunes "pass" for pop band the Fray. The pass delivers songs, video footage and photos, but spaces out the offering over several weeks in the hope of holding consumers' attention and justifying the premium price. Earlier this year, British electronic group Depeche Mode launched its own iTunes pass to help promote the release of its 12th studio album. Apple plans several more subscription-style passes in the coming weeks.

The offer is part of a broader strategy among record labels as they try to adapt to a retail landscape now dominated by the iTunes Store, which has become the world's largest music retailer. While iTunes has thrown the music industry a lifeline by getting listeners to pay for a product that many had been getting free via illegal file-sharing, it also has created a new set of problems for record labels. The vast majority of iTunes sales are for single-song downloads, while higher-priced album sales have dwindled. Record companies are desperate to find ways, including re-pricing songs, to hook consumers on bigger-ticket products that deliver higher margins.

The release of the Fray's iTunes pass comes the same day that song prices on the iTunes Store are set for an overhaul. Instead of the longstanding across-the-board price of 99 cents, songs will be priced on a three-tiered system, with new releases or hits costing $1.29, and older tunes at 69 cents. Those occupying the middle ground will still cost 99 cents.

The four major-label groups have been calling for such a shift so they can make more money on their most sought-after releases. But even so, many in the recorded-music industry view consumers' gravitation to song-by-song downloads as a major economic problem. Among other things, major labels can't sustain their global marketing and physical distribution infrastructures with transactions that net them pennies apiece.

"If what this industry is relying on are one-by-one download sales, I don't care what the price is, that's not an industry that grows," said David Ring, executive vice president of Universal Music Group's eLabs division, speaking at a conference in February. "That's not a business that can, in my view, be a healthy business." Universal Music is part of Vivendi SA of France.

Though CD sales still account for around 80% of retail music sales in the U.S., they have fallen 20.3% this year alone, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Adding in digitally downloaded albums, sales are down 13.5%, compounding a 45% decline in album sales since 2000. Sales of individual digital tracks are up 17% this year. Even so, using an industry metric called "track equivalent albums," which counts 10-song downloads as one album, sales are still down 7%.

Depeche Mode recently charged $19 for more than 30 songs and videos -- most of them available only as part of the pass -- culminating with its new album, "Sounds of the Universe." The album and pass are being released by EMI Group Ltd., which is owned by British private-equity fund Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd.

Representatives of Apple and EMI declined to say how many users have signed up for Depeche Mode's iTunes Pass since it became available in February. But both companies said they were happy with the adoption rate.

One downside to the pass idea: It's something of a grab bag. Fans don't know exactly what they'll get. Still, the price isn't that much more than the cost of many full albums.

The Fray's iTunes Pass follows their most recent, self-titled album, which was released in early February. The songs and videos are to be mostly recorded live while the band is on tour. Instead of waiting months or years for the live recordings to be released on an album, buyers will get them within weeks or even days of their performance.

"It's like buying a ticket," says the band's lead singer and pianist, Isaac Slade. "But it doesn't go to the show, it goes to the backstage room where we're showing each other YouTube videos. It's a chance to let the fan in."

Apple has begun offering fans other incentives to trade up from individual songs to full albums. A feature introduced in 2007 called "complete my album" allows a buyer to apply money spent on individual songs toward the cost of the full album it came from.

Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research, cautions that the subscriber passes are unlikely to spur a mass shift from consumers' habit of cherry-picking the songs they want, but says, "It's one more thing that helps offset the negative."Eddy Cue, the Apple vice president who oversees iTunes, says that "once [an album] gets out the door, you can't update it, you can't refresh it, you can't do anything to it." But the add-ons allow music companies to keep it new for a longer period.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123906011712694965.html#mod=testMod
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Frank_W
Member Avatar
Resident Misanthrope
Quote:
 
But the add-ons allow music companies to bilk the consumer out of more money for a longer period.
<_<
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
Oh yeah, this is too rich to take in for breakfast.

Sony, King of "Imma invent my own crap to make my customers slaves to my sh!tty way of doing things" is using iTunes, the most fascist of all online music stores, for its next cockamamy scheme.

Quote:
 
The vast majority of iTunes sales are for single-song downloads, while higher-priced album sales have dwindled. Record companies are desperate to find ways, including re-pricing songs, to hook consumers on bigger-ticket products that deliver higher margins.


Hey dumb****s. We don't want it. You don't mess with your products to stuff what you want to stuff down your customers' throats. You cater to their needs. I mean, not only do they teach that in Business 101 on the first day, the damn janitor who's in charge of cleaning up the Business 101 lecture halls could tell you that.

I am so sick of the music industry's bullsh!t.

Here's a switch: one of my favorite bands has now been around for 20 years. To celebrate the occasion, they're coming out with one single on the first of every month this year. And the "subscription cost"? None. It's all free. And they're still making plenty of money from ticket sales and whatever else they have going on. When they put all the singles together on an album next January, I'll be sure to buy it even though I'll have obtained each song for free.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
QuirtEvans
Member Avatar
I Owe It All To John D'Oh
I take it you won't be buying the Fray's iTunes pass, then?

You shouldn't say those things publicly, Sony's stock is going to take a dive on the news. :tongue:
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
QuirtEvans
Apr 7 2009, 04:42 AM
I take it you won't be buying the Fray's iTunes pass, then?

You shouldn't say those things publicly, Sony's stock is going to take a dive on the news. :tongue:
Nahh. I don't listen to sh!t rock. :P

Quote:
 
"It's like buying a ticket," says the band's lead singer and pianist, Isaac Slade. "But it doesn't go to the show, it goes to the backstage room where we're showing each other YouTube videos. It's a chance to let the fan in."


How novel!

The bands I go to see hang out after every show, and anyone who wants to go say hi is welcome to do so.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Ridiculous, but I'm sure there are some hardcore fans who would go for it.

Here's an idea for improving album sales, Sony: make every song on the album a good one, rather than having 80% of it be filler crap.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Aqua Letifer
Member Avatar
ZOOOOOM!
Red Rice
Apr 7 2009, 05:57 AM

Here's an idea for improving album sales, Sony: make every song on the album a good one, rather than having 80% of it be filler crap.
:thumb: A viable business model if ever I heard one.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Free Forums with no limits on posts or members.
Learn More · Sign-up Now
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply